Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Upcycled Book Storage...

...Yes, let's go with that, because this is one of the odd ideas I told you would be coming from me this month. I was thinking while preparing this post that perhaps we should change the name of our blog to "Reading with Martha & Macgyver" (where, of course, Robyn is the 'Martha' portion with her cute, clever, lovely ideas and I am 'Macgyver' with my doo-hickeys and contraptions.) So, here it is, Macgyver on children's books...

While my oldest was still sleeping in the crib, she already had a big thing for books! I mean she loved them and she wanted a ton-- TON of them in her bed, but they would always fall through the crib slats which was very annoying. Finally, one day when I was so sick of having her squawk at me about the books falling, I decided, "I must do something about this." And so, the crib bookshelf was born...

(Don't get too excited, wait 'til you see what I made it out of. It's upcycling, remember.) The thing is, when putting something in the crib, a parent or guardian has to take into account the very real possibility that at some point that item may be thrown out of the crib. So, it had to be something lightweight, non-valuable, and safe for the child.

Hello diaper box! No, that wasn't a typo, I used a diaper box. Take a look...

You wanna start with the longest diaper box you can find (I swear when I made the original for Lilac that the box was the same width as the crib (because now diaper companies are surely jipping us right?) but I may be remembering that incorrectly.) After you've got the box, cut all the open flaps off.

Now stand the box up on it's end and draw a diagonal line from corner to corner, in preparation for cutting. Need a straight edge? I just used one of the flaps I had already cut off. (Seriously, I don't know why I am writing step-by-step instructions for this silliness, I apologize!) ﻿

In case anyone's still reading, you now have two triangular pieces of box left. Just cut them apart and ta-da! Your diaper box bookshelf is ready!! Here is the current 'crib sleeper' at my house checking out the new accommodations...

She loves it!

In case you don't have a use for this or you think it's just plain wacky, check out Martha, I mean Robyn's hanging bookshelf for some actual cute book storage.

AND, because this post has to my surprise, had quite a bit of traffic, it's linked up over at Hope Studios' Tutorial Tuesday. (I'm thinking it will probably be the first diaper box tutorial to hit that blog too.) Happy upcycling!

Burning Questions?

-No, those aren't real 'owies' on her feet, band-aids are her favorite accessory.
-Yes, I know this post may seem silly, but I mentioned a diaper box crib shelf once to Vanessa and she asked to see it, so here it appears.
-This 'crib sleeper' hasn't been lucky enough to have one of these sooner because (a) she is a very good sleeper and doesn't need distractions and (b) she has a bit of a book ripping history.
-No, Huggies did not pay me to plaster their box all over the blog, I wish!

Meet Robyn

& Whitney

Mom of 3 and frequent tangent goer-offer! I've got waaaay more books than my husband thinks necessary, but there's (currently) less than $10 in library fines, so life is good!

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We have a list of 75 children's books we love-- and we even made it into a bookmark!
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